ç; . rf@ &í)Æ 0 0 :;; < . , ?/ Y & ; J' \ 'Ï f;\!!:d . .;'\. .. ... ", > ;\ rt tJf:':") ' ,/ ..... w'''.'t : ,' ;\} . "i oJ: :" 1; - ]f ; r<_ :: æ" ': .c::. , ' , :1 ';';:1: ,,' ,;: :' ' . <<\l:" ' :':':::'fJ t . , ' , ': : : ,, ' ,, : : q ,: , ' . '. ,:: " , :, : " " ":.:,,, ,<,: ',.. : ' ,. jèi:,: ', 1 . . 1 _,= -. S: :::":' '$;:':"'&l- : :. . .1 'i ' ! >. jt-- .-. ...:...;.......:. -. ...";..:...-:..... . -'.::'.'-. ';'f:.:';';-::::::..:'-;:;-:<<:-:'; ,, _"7? _ I r k - _...:;.::' ." JTi "We slipped in the tub. " . daughter incest, in which the male lead would be played by Godard. It was only after Roussel's refusal that, as Godard later said, "it occurred to me: God the Father and his daughter." But as Godard was taking on the grand themes of Western civilization- European painting, opera, classical mu- sic, psychoanalysis, Christianity-the world, particularly the American movie world, was heading in a different direc- tion. In the United States, the appeal of foreign films has always depended on their blend of intelligence and sex, but Godard's movies were unusually demanding intellectually, and the sex wasn't fun. At the same time, after the fi- nancial success of Spielberg's "Jaws" and George Lucas's "Star Wars," Hollywood was gearing its movies to the adoles- cent raised on T and the burgeoning American independent cinema likewise offered a more familiar set of references Even the most striking of the indepen- dent films, like Jim J armusch's "Stranger Than Paradise," didn't demand a knowl- edge of Delacroix or Beethoven to be appreciated. Paradoxicall Godard's reliance on recovered fragments of Western culture lent his films a new emotional depth. Yet his work of the mid-nineteen- eighties was released commercially in 72 THE NEW YOR.KER., NOVEMBER. 20,2000 . the United States with little fanfare- until 1985 , when "Hail Mary" generated a controversy too heated to be ignored. Although the film's outward elements seem jokey (Joseph drives a taxi, Mary helps out in her father's gas station and plays on a girls' basketball team), the tone and import of the film are sublime and respectful, and have even suggested to some a powerful, non-dogmatic ar- gument for Christian faith. Many be- lievers, however, were disturbed by other aspects of the film: Mary is shown not only nude but in erotic agon as if she were in the throes of sexual possession, presumably by the Holy Spirit. The :film met with protests, sometimes violent, in cities throughout Europe and the United States. When Pope John Paul II criticized it, Godard responded with a barbed apology, requesting its with- drawal from the Italian market: "It's the house of the church, and if the Pope didn't want a bad boy running around in his house the least I could do is respect his wishes. This Pope has a special rela- tionship to Mary; he considers her a daughter almost." A t the 1985 Cannes Film Festival, flush with his renewed celebrity and notoriety, Godard approached Menahem Golan, of Cannon Films, and asked him to produce a film of "King Lear." Golan agreed, and wrote out a contract on a napkin from the bar where they were meetIng, adding one clause: the script would be written by Norman Mailer. Godard was delighted with the plan: "It was King Lear and his daughter Cordelia that I had in mind, a little like God and Mary in the other :film." At first, Mailer balked, assuming that Godard was "hell on writers." He was persuaded, he told me, only by Golan's offer to let him direct his own :film, "Tough Guys Don't Dance," if he agreed. Godard's first move was to sign Orson Welles as an actor, or "guide"; but after Welles died, later that year, Go- dard came up with another idea: Mailer himself would play King Lear, and his daughter Kate, an actress, would play Cordelia. This, too, Mailer accepted, with misgivings. "I finally decided that the only way to do a modern 'King Lear'-because that was what Menahem Golan wanted- was to make him a Mafia godfather," Mailer said. "I couldn't conceive of any- one else in my range of understanding who would disown a daughter for refus- ing to compliment him. So I turned it into a script I called 'Don Learo' "-pro- d " 1 "" h o h nounce ay-AH-ro - w IC to my knowledge Godard never looked at." Mailer shouldn't have been surprised, inasmuch as Godard hadn't read Shake- speare's play, either. Instead, Godard admitted, he watched all the available :filmed versions of it: "I had a vague idea that there was this girl who says, 'Noth- ing,' and that was enough." Although Godard had intended to make the :film near Mailer's house in Provincetown, he suddenly summoned Norman and Kate Mailer to Switzer- land. "When we got there, to the hotel, he wanted to start shooting right away, and so he started giving me lines, and I was hardly playing King Lear. He said, 'You will be Norman Mailer in this.' And then he gave me some lines, and they were really, by any comfortable measure, dreadful. They would be lines like, I'd pick up the phone and I'd sa 'Kate, Kate, you must come down im- mediatel I have just finished the script, it is superb'-stuff like that. He was shooting, and we were getting some dreadful stuff . . . I said to him, 'Look, I really can't say these lines. If you give